The 18-21 Problem

How do you bid a hand with 18-21 high-card points? Under the strong-twos bidding system I learned from bridge-guru Alexa, one should jump-shift with a holding of 18-21 points: i.e., open one of a suit and then rebid with a jump (whee!) when the bidding comes around again.

The problem I find with this is that partner (and everyone else) often passes my opening, giving me no chance to show that strength by jump-shifting (jumping shift?), and leaving me in a 1-level contract with a powerful hand. For example:

North

A 9 2

5 3 2

J 10 7 6

9 7 5

West

K 8 3

J 9 8

K 9 4 2

10 6 4

East

J 10 7 4

10 7

A Q 5

Q 8 3 2

South

Q 6 5

A K Q 6 4

8 3

A K J

Sitting South I deal and open 1H, everyone passes, and there's no way to find the game contract we ought to be in.

A year or two ago I was sick of being passed. I therefore proposed a modification of the system wherein I can open 2 of a suit, thus forcing a response from my partner, if I have 18 good points. (Opening two of a suit was previously reserved for an even higher point count, and thus I almost never saw such an opening in action.)

My amateur modification seems to do more good than harm, but forcing a weak partner to talk isn't always beneficial to the contract. I wonder if there's a happy medium or a better workaround. Or heck, the other day I got stuck in 1D with 16 points -- maybe I ought to lower the barrier even further.

Real deal

Here's an actual deal. Notice Felicity's skull-and-crossbones coasters.



I'll diagram it out for you:

North

Q 9 7 4

K Q 10 8 5

A Q 8

7

West

J 8 3 2

A 7 4

7 4 2

6 5 4

East

6 5

9 6 3

K 10 9 5

K Q J 3

South

A K 10

J 2

J 6 3

A 10 8 6 2

South (me) dealt. We played the hand twice, out of curiosity. I don't remember the exact bidding sequences -- Matos might -- but the first time South bid 4S and made two overtricks, and the second time South bid 3NT and made two overtricks, I seem to recall. How would you have bid it?

Matos interjects: I do remember the exact bidding sequence--or more accurately, I wrote it down.

First time around:
S: 1C
W: Pass
N: 1H
E: Pass
S: 1S
W: Pass
N: 2D
E: Pass
S: 2NT
All pass. N-S made 5.

Second time:
S: 1C
W: Pass
N: 2H
E: Pass
S: 2S
W: Pass
N: 4S
All pass. N-S made 6.

How would you play this?

North

7 6 5 3

K Q 8

A 6 2

9 8 3

West

A K

10 9 4 3

10 8 5

Q J 10 4

East

4 2

A 7 6 5

J 9 7 3

7 6 5

South

Q J 10 9 8

J 2

K Q 4

A K 2

You, South, are in a 4S contract. West leads the club queen.

Some help for posting hands

Here's a little form where you (we) can type in bridge hands and receive nicely formatted HTML. Enter the deal and/or other information -- each section is optional -- then click Make Code and copy and paste the resulting HTML into a post, where Seven No Trump's CSS (lifted, with much thanks, from Thomas Andrews) should render it handsomely:

NORTH
Spades:
Hearts:
Diamonds:
Clubs:


WEST
Spades:
Hearts:
Diamonds:
Clubs:


EAST
Spades:
Hearts:
Diamonds:
Clubs:


SOUTH
Spades:
Hearts:
Diamonds:
Clubs:

AUCTION (p = pass ; d = double ; r = redouble)

Dealer
--NorthEastWestSouth

Vulnerable:
--
none
N-S
E-W
both

Contract:
--
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

--
Clubs
Diamonds
Hearts
Spades
NT
--
doubled
redoubled

Lead:     
--
A
K
Q
J
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
of
--
Clubs
Diamonds
Hearts
Spades

CODE:

PREVIEW:

Stayman versus transfers

Hi. Pardon me if I don't introduce myself right now, except to say that Matos has an inflated opinion of my bridge skill.

At yesterday's game, hosted with pie and dips by the abundantly gracious Felicity, there was a discussion of the relative merits of the Stayman convention versus straight transfer bidding in response to a 1NT opening. I left in the middle of the discussion, actually, so let me know if I missed some important conclusion.

With straight transfers, responder simply names the suit under the one he/she favors, allowing the opener, who presumably has a stronger hand, to play the contract.

Stayman as I learned it, in combination with transfers, goes like this: In response to a 1NT opening, 2D shows five hearts, 2H shows five spades, 2S shows a five-card minor and no four-card major, and 2NT shows a balanced hand. (Any of these bids can be made at the 3-level instead, which promises maybe 12 points and is forcing to game.) A 2C response is Stayman, showing at least one four-card major suit.

Responses by opener to 2C are: 2D in the absence of a four-card major; 2H with four hearts (may also have four spades); 2S with four spades (implies less than four hearts).

In yesterday's play (we agreed to use Stayman at the outset) there were two hands where responder (me) passed 1NT because he had fewer than 8 high-card points, despite a nice long suit. If we were playing straight transfers I would have indicated that suit and in one case we could have bid and made 4S.

So what's the advantage of Stayman? It's weighted toward finding a major fit, whereas plain transfers generally wind up in responder's longest suit, whatever it may be. That can be a good or bad thing, I think. We ought to have a duplicate tournament to duke out the long-term results of the two conventions. What do you think?

A hand

South Dealer

None Vulnerable

North

♠ 10 9 5 4

♥ J 9 5

♦ J 10 5 4

♣ 6 3

West

♠ Q 6 3

♥ A K 7

♦ K 9

♣ K Q J 9 7

East

♠ A 8 7

♥ Q 10 8 4

♦ A 8 3 2

♣ A 4

South

♠ K J 2

♥ 6 3 2

♦ Q 7 6

♣ 10 8 5 2

South: Pass
West: 1♣
North: Pass
East: 1NT
South: Pass
West: 3NT
All pass

East dummy, 4♦ led

This is the first practice hand I dealt and wrote out the play for recently--the first time I'd done so since I was a teenager. The division is fairly cut and dried; in basic numbers, West has 19 points, East 15--18 and 14 if you discount doubleton points, which you might be tempted to here. Any and all decisions here are mine and mine alone (by "practice hand" I mean I did it as an exercise, alone), and that's what I'm putting it up here for--to be scrutinized, picked apart, shown my flaws in logic and play.

I'm especially curious about the bidding. I learned to play bridge from my family--mother, aunts, uncles, grandfather--who were largely taught by my grandmother's family, the Whites. Barbara, my mother's mom, doesn't play, though her first (and long-since ex) husband Pito learned. My mom, her brothers James, Bob, and Tom, and if I'm remembering correctly my aunt Cathy all play; Mom's ex-husband Chris played some as well. There may have been satellites--friends and cousins--that did too, though I'm less sure of that. At any rate, there was very little "official" about their play; every game was contract and not rubber, for example, and some of their "rules" would get them kicked out of any halfway upstanding bridge club--slamming a discard on the table to signal ownership of the next high card, for example. It was, as they used to refer to it, "kamikaze bridge." And while I don't slam cards on the table, I was also taught to play in a very straightforward manner, one that didn't include conventions like Stayman.

Oddly, given the family's discarding propensities, bidding for slam never really came up either. The goal with us was generally to bid and try to make game, each and every time. (Some of the rubber games I've played more recently involved stopping at, say, a two-bid to finish incomplete game from the prior hand.) So when I do these practice hands, I generally tend to halt bidding once game is made. And obviously my seeing both hands affects the bidding as well.

I think that's the case here. West's one-club bid is straightforward: clubs are long and strong (K-Q-J), with 19 points total, an ace, two king stoppers, and a potential queen stopper in the support suits. I'd conceive it as a signal to go higher, but also as an "I actually have clubs" bid more than a "name your suits" one. East, meantime, has three aces and even-enough distribution; low suit is A-4 of clubs, support everywhere else, a perfect match. 1NT is the obvious response.

West has no four-card suit beyond the initial bid, and I'd like to think I'd go 3NT instinctively as a result. Certainly, a 1NT response to one club is offering a nice array of stuff, and 3NT fits it perfectly. But I'm also tainted by seeing all the cards, so maybe I'm kidding myself here.

My play-out is where my lack of polish comes into full view, though: my North leads the diamond 4, for no better reason than it was the card at the end of my hand at the time. Granted, I'd probably do something similar during actual play; with a bunch of losers like North's, why not? Still, there might have been something better to do. At any rate, it was led, and dummy took it with the Ace, followed by the same suit's 2 led to West's King, the heart 7 to dummy's Jack, and spade 7 to South's King. It's the only trick N-S made; South switches to the Heart 3, West cashes both high hearts before taking dummy's spade Ace. Dummy comes back with the heart 10--and because there are no other hearts, the 10 carries the trick. Clubs then fall for four consecutive tricks, and West takes the last one with the Queen of spades. Bid 3, made 6.

It's entirely possible this is how a real hand would play out, but I'm curious: Would you have bid for slam? Opened differently? Defended harder? The comments box is wide open.

Introducing myself

Hi. I'm Michaelangelo Matos, and I mostly write about music. I've also been playing bridge off and on since I was 13, and recently--I'm 31 now--I've decided to get serious about playing. So I've started this blog in order to discuss the game. I am no one's idea of a great bridge player. I have good instincts and know the basics, and my play is generally solid. But I'm a pretty artless bidder, my defense needs some work, and I could stand to be more cunning in contract situations, especially tight ones--effective suit discards for later overtricks, for example. So this is a kind of public diary of that process, complete with a comments box that I hope will engender tips and advice. Hopefully I'll figure out how to paste in visuals appropriate to representing full deals; apologies for the rather amateurish presentation that'll have to hold in the meantime. But hey--it's a blog.

I'll be joined by my friend Paul, a much more seasoned and better player than I. My hope is to have him comment on my puzzling ideas of what constitutes "bidding" and "play," as well as contribute any other thing he feels like. We may expand it to include other players' commentary and questions and advice, as well. Paul plays a lot socially, and when we play together chances are we'll include highlights of those games. Informally, we're part of a foursome called the Big Beat Bridge Club, where we play bridge while listening to Fatboy Slim and Cut La Roc mix-CDs, among other things. He likes music a lot, too, and knows a lot about food. The more we talk about bridge in relation to other things, I feel, the more fun this will be. Enjoy.